The Not-So-Bad Boy Next Door

Chapter 55

Aiden's POV

Today's my birthday and I still haven't seen the one person I want to see so badly. I have been out all day with the guys and then I came back home and my mom had a whole party set up for me, but I still didn't have the one thing I wanted here, Claire. Everyone's here but Claire and I know she's home because I can see her light on and her sitting on her bed. I've been wanting to just go over to her house, walk up to her, and kiss her, then say that I'm taking that as my present, but then there's the rational part of me that keeps me here faking smiles. Plus it might be a little too soon for her, even though she broke up with Jack a month ago.
"Aiden, bro, we all have to head out. Hope you had a good 18th." Spence said while giving me a one arm bro hug. Everyone else gave me there goodbyes and I'm still faking smiles. After everyone left I was in a somewhat bitter mood. I never got a happy birthday or an appearance from Claire. I'm starting to wonder if she forgot. No she couldn't have Ella wouldn't mentioned it to her. Maybe she just doesn't care.
"Aiden, where are you going?" My mom asks when I start to walk up the stairs. I point over my shoulder to my room and call out, "I'm just going to head to bed. Leave all the stuff. I'll clean it tomorrow when I get up."
"Aiden wait we're not done with the night yet." I slowly walk down the stairs and my mom comes out of the kitchen. She tells me to follow her and then walks us out the back door and towards the park. Where the hell are we going?
We continue to keep walking until we're right inside of the swings. My mom stops and so do I. She turns to me and says, "It's a present. It's by the swings. Don't stay out too late." She turns around and walks back to our house. Confused I walk towards the swings and the closer I get the closer I see something there. A person. I walk a little faster and when I get close enough I make out Claire sitting on the swings, smiling at me.
"Didn't think I forgot about your birthday, did you?" She asks while I take a seat next to her, the street light illuminating her face.
"Honestly? I kind of just thought you didn't care. I saw you in your room and Ella and everyone else showed up at the party, but you didn't. Never even got a happy birthday text." I say with a frown. She looks down to the ground and mumbles, "Now why would I send you a text if I was going to do it in person."
"To give me some kind of piece of mind. I seriously thought that you forgot..." I whisper. I didn't expect her to hear it, but apparently she did because she responded with, "Well it'll make sense in a minute or so." She turns to me and holds out a box.
"I thought it would be a little nice to wrap a part of it. Probably doesn't make sense right now, does it?" She asks and I shake my head. She laughs and says, "Open it."
I slowly unravel the ribbon, then place it on my lap. I rip the wrapping paper and crumple all of it into a ball. I give up on trying to hold it on my lap and just drop it on the ground. I open the fist sized box and pull out a few coupons. I look over to Claire and see her biting her lip. I look back down to the coupons and flip through it. It says one word with a subtitle on each coupon. In the order it says it reads, "Hug, bear hug, kiss, on the lips, date, anytime and anywhere, title, girlfriend and boyfriend. The last coupon says, ' Valid forever and reusable'."
"Is- does this mean?"
"Jack made me realize something. I told myself that we wouldn't work or that I couldn't let it happen because something would go wrong. But it wasn't that. It was because I knew that if I got into something with you, you could actually hurt me. I don't know what it is about you, but if you really wanted to, you could hurt me and I'd be broken after that. So every time I pushed you away it was because I was scared and kept telling myself something other that it wasn't worth the risk of getting hurt. It took me thinking about everything you've said and done to see that it would be worth it even if I got hurt... You're worth it."
She sniffles and looks over at me with a smile, "This is my present and I spent the whole day thinking over this speech and going through this so I wouldn't screw it up. That's why I didn't come, besides the fact that this would've been a little harder to pull off."
"I'm using all of these tonight. I hope you realize that." I murmur. She smiles, "I was counting on it." I pull her up from the swing after getting on my feet and pull her into a hug. I let her move back so she's at arms length and then run my thumb over her cheek. I lean down and gently press my lips against her. She grabs onto my hoodie and pulls me down. I gently kiss her and then pull away. She bites her lip and leans her forehead against mine.
"I will be holding the whole three simple words till we're 25 since you said that quite some time ago." She breathes. I kiss her forehead, "That's fine by me, sweetheart. I love you..."
"And I strongly like you, Aiden." I don't think I'll ever get enough of this girl and I'm determined to treat her like a princess for as long as I have her, which I will try to make the rest of her life, cause there's no one else I'm going to marrying. Not Megan Fox, not some Victoria Secret model, but my one and only, Claire.